As you walk up Smallman Street, the parking lots to your left were once the site of the Fort Pitt Foundry, which cast more than 3,000 cannons and 10 million pounds of shot and shells during the Civil War era.

Our focus for the next part of the tour, however, offers a more tangible and comprehensive look at Pittsburgh's history. It's found in the seven-story, red brick building at Smallman and 13th streets.

If you like ketchup on your fries (and who doesn't?), the tale of how H.J. Heinz grew one tomato patch into a multibillion-dollar prepared foods empire is just one of many amazing stories that await you at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center (Point 1).

Just inside the main doors of this impressive building is a barrel-vaulted chamber designed to accommodate stables and wagons and a ceiling built to support hundreds of tons of ice. That's because the building once housed the Chautauqua Lake Ice Co. Now it houses an eclectic collection of all things Pittsburgh.

In the great hall on the ground floor, you can climb aboard a red- and cream-colored 1949 trolley that once ran between Pittsburgh and Charleroi. A video shows how city residents traveled from Swissvale to the South Side between 1880 and the 1980s.

Outside the trolley and to your left, an exhibit on Isaly's shows how the popular chain of dairy and deli stores grew from a single milk route and dairy plant into a thriving business in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. A facsimile of one of the original "skyscraper" ice cream cones is on display.

Before leaving the great hall to explore the upper stories, make sure to see a Conestoga wagon that travelers used in the 1700s, an enormous Pittsburgh fire bell cast after the Great Fire of 1845 and a rare, stainless steel 1936 Ford sedan.

Take the elevator to the second floor to see "Points in Time,'' which documents 250 years of domestic life, from a 1780 Washington County log home, where Matthew McConnell and his wife raised 10 children, to a steelworker's home from 1910 and a suburban, West Mifflin ranch home from the 1950s.

The cramped, primitive lifestyle of Homestead steelworkers becomes clear as you walk through a communal courtyard where 14 families used the same privy and water pump.

Life was more comfortable in the kitchen of the 1950s home, where appliances gleamed and radio personality Rege Cordic chatted happily on the radio about National Wheelbarrow Week.

One of the centers of immigrant life in Pittsburgh was the Hill District, a neighborhood that was like an Ellis Island. The 1920 census found more than 20 different immigrant groups living there, including Austrians, Russians, Scots, Swedes and Syrians. The Hill District also was home to a synagogue, founded by Jews who emigrated from Poland. The temple, called Machsikei Hadas, which means Upholders of the Faith, moved to North Negley Avenue before closing in the 1980s. Many of its artifacts are preserved at the museum.

On the History Center's third floor, in Discovery Place, children will find 18 interactive stations and games that show how children lived in the past. If you love working with tools or wood, the Charles Prine collection of woodworking planes documents early Western Pennsylvania planemakers and early commercial companies that sold tools.

The fourth floor is devoted to changing and visiting exhibits.

Several steps beyond the main exhibit is the "Heinz 57'' exhibit, which features nostalgic marketing campaigns and the tall, blue director's chair once used by Morris, finicky feline spokesman for 9Lives cat food. There's a 22-minute video of funny TV commercials advertising Heinz products from the United States, South Korea, Japan and Britain. The British commercials, "Heinz Buildz Britz'' and "Beanz Meanz Heinz,'' as well as the campaign that shows people from various occupations serving Heinz products, will make you laugh and give you an appreciation for the company's international scope.

In its early days, Heinz imitated the design of glass containers used by Fortnum & Mason, the British purveyor.

The company was famous for emphasizing the purity of its products, noting that its ketchup was free of benzoate of soda, a dangerous coal tar drug. H.J. Heinz and his son, Howard, lobbied Congress to improve the purity of prepared foods, pushing for passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, which took effect in 1906.

Advertising always played a major role at Heinz, which used wholesome women and children to market its products in the 1880s and at the turn of the century.

To launch its tomato juice, the company invented a character called the "Aristocrat Tomato,'' a red-faced gentleman dressed in a black bowler, black cutaway and spats.

A 1920s lunch counter that features Heinz products, including a large brown crock that served the company's baked beans, may make you nostalgic for a bygone era.

The History Center's new Smithsonian wing features the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum, a dynamic museum-within-a-museum which captures the region's evolutiopn and impact as a sports leader over more than a century, from amateur to pro and across the whole spectrum of American sports. The Smithsonian wing also houses traveling exhibits.

The museum, located at 1212 Smallman St. in the Strip District, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $7.50 for adults, $5.00 for students with student identification, $6.00 for senior citizens who are 62 or older, and $3.50 for children ages 6 to 18.

Children ages 5 and younger are admitted free. The museum is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, Easter and New Year's Day.

	CULTURAL DISTRICT		GRANT STREET